bring in the storm
by exploding-empires
Summary: It takes an ocean not to break. / assorted nextgen drabbles
1. lucylorcan

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)  
**warning**: this includes references to suicide. if that could be triggering for you, please _do not_ read this.

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_lucy_ + _lorcan_

( paper )

* * *

She was paper-thin, a shadow of the enigma she used to be (and you miss her, you want her, you _need_ her). She lay with you, curled up in a ball, and you felt her paper heart beating against yours; frail, a feeble pulse. You wanted to put the passion back into her because she was _Lucy_, Lucy Weasley, and she was not this broken little girl that she'd turned into.

She pretended, pretended that everything was fine. (It wasn't, and it isn't.) She became a hollow shell of a person – her eyes dark caves in her face, her lips chapped and bitten – but still she ignored it. Slapped on some mascara and acted as though her eyes (window into a person's soul, they are) were just tired. Painted on the lipstick, and with it a smile, as though her lips were just a little dry.

Maybe she can be paper now. You watch the newspaper ("MINISTER'S DAUGHTER HANGS HERSELF") curl up in the fireplace, turn into ash. With a quick _swoop_ the ashes are mixed in with hers. One and the same. Lucy is paper-thin.


	2. jamesdominique

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)  
**warning**: this includes a cousin/cousin relationship. if that offends you, please don't read this.

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_james_ + _dominique_

( breakable )

* * *

You think that possibly, your penchant for romanticism will be the death of you. You want floating ball gowns and crumbling castles and red lipstick and typewriters and you wish, you wish, you wish, that you had been born five hundred years ago. You would be an aristocrat, definitely. How couldn't you be? You're Dominique Weasley and you're part-Veela and you're one of the romantic things - you're a floating leaf in an abandoned passageway, you're a classic record in a musty charity shop.

And you – you, you unbreakable aristocrat – you think that maybe you and James, you could be one of the romantic things, too. Because isn't there something hopelessly fairytale about forbidden love? The Romeo and Juliet perspective, except not. (Not, because your families don't hate each other because they _are_ each other. Not, because you don't live in the Elizabethan era, you live in the cold, sharp twenty-first century. Not, because you're blood relations – _cousins_, Dominique, and that will never change. Not, not, not.)

Because you, you are one of the romantic things, but you will never live five hundred years ago. You're not an aristocrat and you can never be forgiven for falling in love with the worst possible boy.

Maybe you aren't so unbreakable anymore.


	3. roseteddydominique

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_rose _+ _teddy _+ _dominique_

( frequency )

* * *

They are not a delicacy, or a radiance; they are a frequency, and to be quite honest it isn't even special any more. (But they do it anyway, because they need each other.)

But _they_ are a subtle tension in the room and nobody can deny that they know – Victoire's dry comments have a jealous tinge, but they don't notice and they don't care, because this is them and nobody else could possibly understand. They are the stars that light the sky and the bells ringing through the air: they are something special, something unique and it shouldn't – it _can't_ – go to waste.

They are a necessity. They don't revel in each other, as they curve and gasp in the moonlight. It's a routine, it's a well-exercised practice. They've gone through it all, exhausted all available emotions and it's gone – the way that they once united is gone.

But _they_ don't have the practicality. They might have a certain chemistry; a certain spark, but too often it's lit and the spark is a flame of passion and anger and if they keep doing this, someone's going to get hurt. (And in a way, they're both hurting already because there's no way this can last, no way it can overcome something so inevitable.)

They are Teddy and Dominique and they are predictable and they are frequent. They are picture-perfect. They don't argue, they just exist, side-by-side, pretending that their time hasn't run out. They are Teddy and Dominique and they're getting married tomorrow and there's no way to stop it.

But _they_ are Teddy and Rose and they are set on a path of self-destruction. So why is he spending tonight with her?


	4. teddymolly

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. this one is non-linear. :)  
**warning**: this one is slightly gory and includes someone getting shot. if you don't want to read that, this isn't for you.

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_teddy _+ _molly_

( idle revolutionaries )

* * *

Tears mixed with blood stains ball gowns a reddish pink colour, Molly learns.

"We had a good run," he whispers, his voice strained.

_No, no, please no—_

/

Molly's Uncle Harry has been spearheading a revolution against the king. Thinking about it, it never was a good idea—but they believed in it, they fought _so hard_ for it—and now they're facing almost certain execution.

"Run! Molly, run!" Teddy cries and she does, oh she does.

She doesn't stop worrying. Four straight days of not knowing (_is he alive? Will I know when he dies?_) and she's not strong enough for this. James, Fred and Dominique lead it, always the braver ones, alongside the older generation. Teddy is the one left behind; abandoned because no matter how much it hurts him, Uncle Harry has to protect Lily over Teddy. Molly doesn't, but she leaves anyway.

_I left anyway_.

/

At the final battleground, he's there and it must all be okay now, surely? He's there, he's going to save her—they can be together, properly together!

She's crying and fighting and trying so hard to stay alive for Teddy, for Uncle Harry, for the baby growing inside her body. She never understood how much this mattered before; she was just an idle revolutionary, shouting over the national anthem but no feeling in it, no emotion as she carried out the actions.

And there he is, so close—he's within her reach now—

One single bullet shoots towards her and before she knows it he's leaping in front of her, he's going to be hit he can't no no Teddy no—

"My Teddy," she cries, "no, my Teddy, no!"

/

"We had a good run," she whispers as the bullet shoots through her head.


	5. albuslily

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)  
**warning**: this one includes incest.

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_albus _+ _lily_

( now i can't disappear )

* * *

I can see into your bedroom from my window and that's not the reason I bought this house but your coffee's going cold. Your coffee's going cold and I'm not looking at the way your tutu shows your legs off and it's not important that you're in a leotard and I am not looking at you as you dance.

Dad told me once that scars are powerful and I wonder how powerful we could be if you held my gaze for a second—if we created a gaping schism in the world because surely that couldn't ever fully heal. I don't think I have, in any case. You are the girl with blazing eyes and ideas scattered across your life like an abstract painting. You are the girl with a myriad of admirers, the girl who danced and cast a spell on the world. You are the girl who's made a monster out of me.

Thinking about it, it almost seems like you meant for this to happen. You are a spider and I am all too easily led, all too easily taken—imagine the field trip the psychologists would have if they knew! I'm already fucked up enough (_trust issues, anger issues, mental issues issues issues issues_) and they don't even know about half of my life.

(i'm scared)

/

For one moment I thought maybe we could—

But the truth of the matter is that you are Midas and I'm stupidly drawn to gold. You are a lighthouse in a destitute bay, and I am running to you because you're all I can see and too late I see that you're a pirate, out to shipwreck me. You're hiding behind smoke and mirrors, creating light to fool innocent boys and I was trapped because I'm stupid and you're Midas and... and damn it, didn't I just want the gold? You touch me and I'm golden but is this a curse or the cure?

For one glorious moment we were monsters together—

You haven't changed. I thought that the Lily who played entire Quidditch teams and tore down Prefects was gone, but little dancer Lily is poisonous. I thought I was safe, I thought you wouldn't sink that low to your own _family_ (and Merlin, that's sick-making) but you're just as bad and I understand now that it must be genetic—your fault is obvious, is almost okay, but mine is disgusting and hidden and perverted and you know exactly how to exploit it.

For one moment we were something and now I can't disappear.


	6. lilylorcan

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_lily _+ _lorcan_

( we people )

* * *

You tie shoelaces in your hair and write poetry on your skin and he doesn't want you, he doesn't want you. You hide your scars with bracelets that you allow to slip, hoping he'll notice, hoping he'll save you and he doesn't - he saves her. You keep changing, because that's what he does, that's what he knows. Maybe it will draw him to you. (It still seems that Teddy's more interested in girls his own age, though.)

Normally, there isn't room for anyone else if he's there. Your eyes don't leave him, for fear that he'll slip away somehow if you don't keep him close. But today you start to notice someone else.

You start to notice the way he looks at Molly and you think that perhaps you're in the same boat.

/

After you sleep together for the first time, you turn to him - trace circles on his chest - and whisper gently, "We people - we're not the same as those people. We people have to stick together."

And you free up a little bit of your heart for him.


	7. teddylily

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_teddy _+ _lily_

( disciples who love their messiahs too much )

* * *

You think you could fall in love with the shadows if he wanted you to. The only thing standing in your way would be your devotion to him, your dedication to everything he has worked for in his glorious life. You refuse to believe he is dead, because everyone thought that before and he rewarded those who remained loyal throughout. You will be one of those. He will rise again, and you will be his most loyal follower.

Most of the others are gone, Bellatrix Lestrange and the Carrows and Pius Thicknesse. You will not go. If it is the last thing you do, the last breath on your lips, you will fall at his feet and worship him. It is the least you can do for the man who has done so much to enrich your life, even indirectly. You think that he was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen, at sixteen, and you'd all but forgotten that you'd ever even considered Teddy, because Teddy Lupin couldn't hold a candle to Tom Riddle Jr.

Teddy is worried about you, as are the rest of your family. You are dimly aware of that. You don't care.

You remember, suddenly, a time that Teddy was the light of your life. The times when Teddy was your saving grace, the last metal grate to stop you falling into damnation. He didn't hold out, clearly. You remember a time that you thought he looked like an angel. You didn't realise that the angel you were looking for was Lucifer. You hear a footstep as you light a fresh cigarette. The sparks of the lighter fascinate you and you keep it clicked open, watching the flame flicker in front of your eyes. You run your finger through it slowly, to feel the tingle of playing with fire.

"What are you doing?" a voice asks, sharply. There was a time, you know, that voice would've haunted your dreams. Now it is a harsher voice, a voice that speaks only truth, not the sugar-coated lies of a well-intentioned boy who was older than you and engaged to your cousin.

"Teddy," you state. Your voice is bored and hollow. "Have you come to inform me of the ways of the prestigious Hufflepuff dynasty?"

"Merlin, Lily," he sighs. He sits next to you. This was not part of the plan. His skin brushes yours as he tries to get your attention. For the first time in about a year, you feel something real - a sharp jolt of electricity. You turn to look at him and his face is painfully sharp in your vision, and you cannot look away. His eyes are concerned and warm and he runs his fingers (damn, the dreams you've had about those fingers) through his hair, making it stick up the way you know so well from your father and your brothers. You try to swallow and squeeze your eyes shut with the pain of breathing fresh air for what feels like the first time ever. "Some disciples love their messiah too much, you know? And I'm not saying that religion is a bad thing, but Jesus didn't want to be an obsession."

"Didn't he?" you ask.

He kisses you, angrily and passionately, and you forget your own name; he is everything.

After he pulls away, and you have finally found the words to speak again, you just say, "What about Victoire?"

"God, Lily, you really are oblivious, aren't you?"

You don't know what this means but you suspect it has something to with the rush of blood to the head that you have just experienced and you hope he has too. You don't really care about Victoire, you just need to know what has changed to suddenly make the man you doted on for years kiss you when he's just made it clear that he hates you and everything you choose to be with a passion.

"Kill your heroes," he whispers, and he stands up and leaves. You look down and your cigarette has gone out.


	8. teddyeffy

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_teddy _+ _effy_

( anxious )

* * *

It all comes down to the fact that Effy Stonem likes setting fire to things, including herself. And, as it turns out, Teddy Lupin is extremely flammable.

/

When they first meet, Effy is eighteen and Teddy is twenty-four and she makes him stupidly anxious. Not just because she is a very pretty girl - although she is, in a broken doll sort of way - but because she is a strange kind of unhinged, the kind that makes comments about the fragility of life as though she's talking about the weather, and screams muffled names into her pillow in her sleep. This makes Teddy anxious for his own wellbeing and of being around her, but it also makes him worry about her like it's his job, like she's not a grown woman who probably has her own ways of controlling her demons. (Because he worries that she's not.)

He finds out about her past one night when she first breaks and he thinks that this will be the worst it ever gets. It's not.

He learns about Freddie, and the way she spiralled into depression and the way there are still things she doesn't know about her friends and her life before the depression, because of what the man did to her. He learns to pick out certain words that she screams. Freddie is a frequent one, but Cook is more so. She doesn't talk about Cook. Sometimes he hears his own name, and he's too afraid to ask what happens to him in these dreams, because they're often the ones that shake her the most.

/

When they are well into their turbulent relationship - if you can even call it that - Effy still makes him anxious. She makes him anxious with her drinking and her drugs and her nightclubbing, because she's twenty-six now and surely it should have slowed down?

He tries not to shout at her when she starts the arguments and paints his belongings red and kicks him out the flat, which happens every few months. He doesn't shout because he knows it won't help and because he's afraid of breaking her.

/

She sets him on fire quickly but he burns so slowly he barely knows it's happening.


	9. jamesrose

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)  
**warning**: this one includes a cousin/cousin relationship. if that offends you, please don't read this.

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_james_ + _rose_

( endgame )

* * *

"People like us aren't meant to be endgame. We both know that, James."

"Since when did I follow the rules, Rose?"

In all honesty, innocent virginal little Rose has wanted to kiss her cousin since she was eleven years old, and she hasn't grown out of it. In fact, she's rather grown into it. It wasn't helped by James kissing her like the same blood didn't run in their veins, but she didn't help it either by finding the broom closet she knows that Scorpius frequents (with Albus, she suspects) and locking it when James' mouth found hers.

But now they have suffered the batters and bruises of any couple - like they could ever be that - and their hands know each other's bodies and her fingers interweave with his like they were built like that, like puzzle pieces separated into different boxes, destined to stay far away from each other. And Rose's eyes have looked into James' so many times, but the sharp blue of his always speeds up her heartbeat like she's a pathetic little girl.

"We shouldn't be doing this," she says, reluctantly.

"It's dark outside," he says. "Just stay for a while."


	10. rosescorpius

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_rose_ + _scorpius_

i counted up the costs  
there's nothing left for you to take away  
( _hello hurricane - switchfoot_ )

* * *

It starts with a girl attending Muggle school that's not far away enough from Hogwarts that it doesn't hurt, and a boy that shouldn't have met her, because fate drove their paths as far away from each other as it could.

Scorpius doesn't go to Hogwarts. His parents agree that it's best for him to start a new life, to escape the judgement they have experienced everywhere they go. Of course, it stretches as far as Durmstrang - prejudice like the kind expressed towards ex-Death Eaters reaches everywhere - but it's less harsh than it would be at Hogwarts, and they're further away from the Potters and the Weasleys, of course.

But sooner or later, in an act of rebellion, he strikes up a friendship with Lily Potter, because he's heard that she's a Slytherin and that she's the least Potter-Weasley of the whole family (although she loves them unfailingly). It's not long before he hears about Lily's Squib cousin who's dyed her hair pink and rarely speaks to any of the adults in the family. Scorpius immediately likes the sound of Rose.

/

They break each other, of course. It's inevitable. Rose writes sad poetry and Scorpius contemplates the Dark Arts. They aren't bitter towards each other; they remain friends, but estranged lovers, at once. Rose sends him her writing, because he's still the person she trusts the most in the whole world. One line makes Scorpius want to rip out his heart and give it to her, because it would only be returning what was once hers to begin with.

_I counted up the costs. There's nothing left for you to take away._

He thinks it expresses perfectly everything he feels towards her, because she ripped him apart - but he still wants to hold her close and tell her that it will be okay, because she's feeling like this too and Scorpius' fucking hero complex makes him need to fix her. (He knows very well that she doesn't need fixing, but he still wants to.)


	11. mollylucy

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)  
**warning**: this one includes incest and is femslash. if either of those things offends you, please don't read this.

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_molly _+ _lucy_

i hear you calling in the dead of night  
( _overjoyed - bastille_ )

* * *

Looking back, it started a long time ago, with an empty bottle of sleeping pills and Audrey Weasley's obituary in the Daily Prophet plastered onto Lucy's locker at school, and Molly sneaking into the Hufflepuff dormitory to hold Lucy while she cried. It started with a Minister of Magic in the midst of a mental breakdown for a father, and expensive therapists who prescribed them yoga and meditation. It started with two girls who understood each other when nobody else could.

But now, in the middle - or the end? How could they know? - it was legs tangled together in unironed sheets and goodbye kisses that lasted too long and a shared apartment that nobody thought to check for suspicious activities. It was easy (scarily easy, if they thought about it) to erase the past. It was a by-product of the separation the wizarding world forced between itself and Muggle society; reinventing yourself, forgetting the existence you had before, was a matter of hair dye and a few spells. Although Molly knows they were lucky to have it so easy, she can't help but find herself missing the dark hair dancing in front of her face, and she can't deny that she likes it when the blonde starts to show in Lucy's roots.

Neither of them admitted that the situation was what it was. They didn't see other people, and they didn't stop being the way they were with each other, but they never, _never_ said it out loud. There was always an excuse.

When they got married, they agreed that it was best for their own protection in the Muggle world. "If they know we're sisters, they might join the dots together. This way, we still get next-of-kin status, without the danger of being found."

It was a good excuse. It wasn't enough to convince either of them that this was okay.

Molly worried. She was well past worrying about her sexuality - she didn't struggle to admit who she was, any more; not in that sense, anyway. She worried almost exclusively about Lucy, and _them_. She worried about the electricity that ran through her veins when she kissed her sister. She worried about the ache in her bones that had settled seven years ago and only freed itself when her arms were wound around Lucy. She worried about what their family would say if they found them. She worried about the way she heard Lucy crying in her sleep, calling in the dead of night, like a prayer. She worried, most of all, because she knew that she wasn't good enough for Lucy, and she never could be.

It started with disaster and they both knew it would end in it, too.


	12. jamesroxanne

**a/n**: i've written quite a few drabbles for the drabble tag at ngfs, and i thought i'd make a collection of them here. :)  
**warning**: this includes a cousin/cousin relationship. if that offends you, please don't read this.

* * *

**bring in the storm  
**_james_ + _roxanne_

( existential crisis )

* * *

Roxanne has cut through the hearts of many men and women, and she has no boundaries any more. After Fred, there wasn't much she wouldn't do.

James has crossed the line with Dominique, with Rose, with Victoire even. At this point, the line is so worn and warped that he doesn't much care what the people on the other side of it think of him.

They are a match made simultaneously in heaven and in hell; they are Adam and Eve, they made the earth. The ground they stand on exists because of them. They were the angels that fell from heaven but were too good for hell. They are one and the same, but they are also opposites. He is water, and sometimes he is boiled and angry and steam, but mainly he is just the calm of an ocean that hides its waves until it has a swimmer pulled in with the tide. She is fire, pure and simple, and she will burn anyone who comes near her, but sometimes they crave the danger.

James kisses her, and the water puts the flame out.

Fred worries that Roxanne is having an existential crisis, but Dominique and Rose and Victoire all know that Roxanne is just hooked, because James may be water, but he is also cocaine, destructive and addictive and he is going to rip her life apart.

But she intends to let him.


End file.
